Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to automatically begin attracting more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the automation process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing simply by consistently adding content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going according to schedule in the widget assembly workshop when everything comes to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately goes towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and makes a single tap about 1 inch from the top-right corner of the box.
Immediately, everything in the assembly line comes back to life.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While many experts often make difficult solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and/or online services.
External Web Properties And Solutions – Configuration
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your setup, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, use this information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add your account code to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to various other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, use your account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify your list of update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is safe from being targeted.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a dead link, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is post web content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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